Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 2

‘Filthy peasants!’ said Pyotr Nikolayevich, ‘Doing this to me. Haven’t I been good to them? Just you wait. Bandits they are, the lot of them. From now on you’re going to get different treatment from me.’

X

But the horses – three chestnuts – had already been taken to outlying places. Mashka they sold to some gypsies for eighteen roubles; the second horse, Dapple, was exchanged for a peasant’s horse in a village forty versts away; and Beauty they simply rode until he dropped, then slaughtered him. They sold his hide for three roubles. The leader of this enterprise was Ivan Mironov. He had worked for Pyotr Nikolayevich in the past, knew his way round the estate, and had decided to get some of his money back. And had consequently thought up the whole plan.

After his misfortune with the forged coupon Ivan Mironov embarked on a long drinking bout and would have drunk away everything he possessed if his wife had not hidden from him the horse collars, his clothes, and anything else he might have sold to buy vodka. All the time he was on his binge Ivan Mironov was thinking incessantly not just about the individual who had wronged him, but about all the masters, some of them worse than others, who only lived by what they could filch from the likes of him. On one occasion Ivan Mironov was drinking with some peasants who came from a place near Podolsk. And as they travelled along the road the muzhiks told him about how they had driven off some horses belonging to another muzhik. Ivan Mironov began ticking off those horse-thieves for committing such an offence against another muzhik. ‘It’s a sin,’ he said. ‘To a muzhik his horse is just like a brother, yet you go and deprive him of it. If you want to steal horses, then steal them from the masters. That’s all those sons of bitches deserve anyway.’ The further they went the more they talked, and the muzhiks from Podolsk said that if you wanted to steal horses from the gentry you had to be clever about it. You needed to know all about the lie of the land, and if you hadn’t got someone on the inside, it couldn’t be done. Then Ivan Mironov remembered about Sventitsky, on whose estate he had once lived and worked, and he remembered how Sventitsky had held back a rouble and a half from his wages to pay for a broken kingpin, and he remembered too the chestnut horses he had worked with on the farm.

Ivan Mironov went and saw Sventitsky on the pretext of looking for work, but in reality he was there to see how things were and find out all he could. Having done that, and discovered that there was no night-watchman and that the horses were kept in separate loose-boxes in the stable, he called in the horse-thieves and saw the whole business through.

After splitting the proceeds with the muzhiks from Podolsk Ivan Mironov returned to his village with five roubles. At home there was no work for him to do: he had no horse. And from that time on Ivan Mironov took to associating with horse-thieves and gypsies.

XI

Pyotr Nikolayevich Sventitsky did everything in his power to find the horse-thieves. He knew that the raid could not have been carried out without the help of one of his employees. And so he began to regard his farm-hands with suspicion and to enquire which of the farm-workers had not been sleeping at the farm on the night in question. He was told that Proshka Nikolayev had not spent that night at the farm. Proshka was a young fellow who had just returned from doing his military service, a good-looking, nimble fellow whom Pyotr Nikolayevich used to take with him on outings to serve as a coachman. The district superintendent of police was a friend of Pyotr Nikolayevich’s, and he was also acquainted with the chief constable, the marshal of the nobility, the leader of the zemstvo and the investigating magistrate. All these persons regularly came to his name-day celebrations and were familiar with his delicious fruit liqueurs and his pickled mushrooms – white mushrooms, honey agarics and milk agarics. They all sympathized with him and attempted to offer him their help.

‘There you are, and you are the one who is always defending the muzhiks,’ said the district superintendent. ‘I was telling the truth when I told you they were worse than wild animals. You can’t do a thing with them unless you use the knout and the rod. So you say it was this Proshka, the one who rides out with you as coachman, do you?’

‘Yes, he’s the one.’

‘Have him brought in here, please.’

Proshka was summoned and they began to question him.

‘Where were you that night?’

Proshka tossed his hair back and flashed them a glance.

‘At home.’

‘What do you mean, “at home”? All the farm-hands say you were not there.’

‘As you please, sir.’

‘We’re not talking about what I please. So where were you?’

‘At home.’

‘Very well, then. Constable, take this man to the district station.’

‘As you please, sir.’